My First Painting of Uncertain Geometry (2008)

Tinges of peach, blue and gray are always around when I am occupied with these thoughts. Mingling together, forming different unburnished shades- so very explicit yet unidentifiable. I walk around in my second home like a zombie with remnants of humane elements inside frozen in time. The peach sits yonder, right there with its own paintbrush trying to give a shape to something vague yet sentiently present, loud and clear. The palate we both use is the same and same are the colors. Only the brushes used are different. While gray paints with thick strokes of firm acrylic and oil, peach uses water colors blending into each other and again frustrating the hands that executed the strokes. For there is blue as well engulfing it like the sky engulfs the earth...

Grey starts all over again, on a new canvas with a new form in mind. The strokes are bold again, but toned down and calm; determined than ever and so very even. Somehow two different canvases try to compliment each other on two different planes angularly placed to meet at just one and one point only. Its like a puzzle when the interdependence of the strokes is noticed. Gray's strokes are all that I said but they end with a smudge over another stroke of a different color while the water color of peach is a blend all along, a very bold blend. Both are so similarly different and differently similar.

I wonder about the effect its going to have if both the wet canvases are placed on each other and removed. What will they become? Will gray become smudged and peach bold or will it mingle into an interdependent, symbiotic form of artistic co-existence transforming into real life? 

Oh hold on! What about blue? It has a canvas too right? Equally complex, mindless and ambitious? Then we have to form a triangle of canvases. I hope they are not wet then otherwise the strokes of two will trickle into the third one draining both of them. Then which is the base of the triangle and which two are the arms? Shall we now contemplate about the different geometric variations of it like isosceles, right angled, equilateral etc.? Well, its still doesn't do any good to the dichotomy. Even if one arm or one angle compromises itself in terms of length or angle the affect remains the same doesn't it? One "has to be" the base and the other two will have to drain their wet color. 

The colors cannot be dry as then the whole instance becomes a falsity in various degrees rendering this whole quagmire of thoughts null and void. They have to be wet, reflecting light and looking alive because that is what existence is all about- against all odds keep it alive, keep it breathing and never let it dry. 

Gray and peach are like two intersecting circles of a Venn diagram. They have their 'own' but they coexist only when they have a common, shaded point of intersection. Now, the third circle which is the blue of course can fit into it in three different ways. Either form another intersection with peach alone, or with both peach and gray or just with gray. But no matter how wildly Mr. Venn suggests that his diagram seeks balance and equality, it never is true. One of them has to detach from peach and even then the equation will remain unbalanced. A u B u C does not work because 'union(u) ' can only be one. There cannot be two unions within a same set of three variables according to the laws of nature. And that mathematics does not agree with. It forces the variables to bond in more ways than one even when each or one of them loses their individual existence.

Now getting back to painting; it has to dry up sometime or the other. Now how do you frame all three of them together? You could have framed the initial two separately as they have already rubbed off each other and can co-exist adjacently. But when its the question of the third arm of the triangle then again it becomes the 'Venn diagram dilemma'.

For a moment if we start imagining in terms of just two arms, peach and gray, it becomes a little less confusing I think. Then both can merge into one line, a single stroke. Rushing towards two opposite directions like a geometric line does but still remains the same, single, omnipotent line.  So, which painting will be the third, which arm will be the base and which circle will intersect the other two at what point? That is what I call uncertainty. Defying laws of geometry, mathematics and nature. Even dumbfounding art which is limitless, boundless and lies at the ultimate extremes of vague possibilities. If the sea, the wind and the moon are the actors on the above mentioned stage, will anyone watch the play and finally, finally interpret it to bring relief to them with the curtain fall? Or will they have to act on and on and on till Godot finally arrives...